General Aviation Thread

[Ananda]

TTBW as Max replacement ? Well even though it can, it will be a decade more. Thus in mean times, if Boeing step away from E Series with Embrear and the problem MAX reputation and recertification, I don't know how Boeing will catch up quick on single aisle market. Or perhaps they are now already prepared to give the market to Airbus and content as number two. Seems the indication with Embrear deal falling through, they did. At least until Max replacement come out.

 

[Todjaeger]

TTBW as Max replacement ? Well even though it can, it will be a decade more. Thus in mean times, if Boeing step away from E Series with Embrear and the problem MAX reputation and recertification, I don't know how Boeing will catch up quick on single aisle market. Or perhaps they are now already prepared to give the market to Airbus and content as number two. Seems the indication with Embrear deal falling through, they did. At least until Max replacement come out.

One also needs to consider the potential economic impact upon the airliner market following a likely worldwide economic recession or depression, as well as what will likely be a significant and persistent drop in air travel. If a number of airlines end up failing due to a decline in ticket sales, that will likely flood the secondary market with extra aircraft, possibly at 'fire-sale' prices. If that is also coupled with the remaining/surviving airlines also seeing a drop in revenue due to a decline in ticket sales, as well as a decline in demand for seats, there might be very little viable market for new commercial aviation aircraft for the next few years or more.

This could mean that Boeing has time to develop a new, clean sheet design. It is also possible that with a very real potential for changes in air travel usage, a different approach to aircraft passenger compartment features and layout is required or demanded. In that case, airliner types like the conventional single aisle narrow-body might not be what airlines want or need.

About the only thing I am certain of is that there are so many things we are uncertain of.

 

[hauritz]

Only if you wanted to follow the rules and any terrorist or rouge country would want more than one. Modern jet aircraft are very reliable and simply ensuring the fuel and fluids are OK and covers remove you can fly with significantly less than a fraction of 1% chance of anything going wrong . As for someone who knows what they are doing , there will be, as I pointed out before a lot of unemployed aircraft technicians and aircrew out there. you could guarantee some would stoop to being offered enough money.

To be honest there are more effective weapons than rogue airliners. They might have weaponised commercial aircraft back in 9/11 but remember nobody was expecting that. They were hijacked commercial airliners that were diverted to attack NY and Washington. If a large unidentified aircraft were to try and enter the airspace of the US or any other advanced nation they would probably be detected and dispatched pretty quickly. That is assuming that they weren't shot down soon after stealing the airliner. Hard to imagine you could refuel and take off in a jetliner without anyone noticing.

If you want a truly scary prospect just think of a terrorist group deliberately spreading a COVID 19 infection. Simpler and deadlier.

 

[John Fedup]

One also needs to consider the potential economic impact upon the airliner market following a likely worldwide economic recession or depression, as well as what will likely be a significant and persistent drop in air travel. If a number of airlines end up failing due to a decline in ticket sales, that will likely flood the secondary market with extra aircraft, possibly at 'fire-sale' prices. If that is also coupled with the remaining/surviving airlines also seeing a drop in revenue due to a decline in ticket sales, as well as a decline in demand for seats, there might be very little viable market for new commercial aviation aircraft for the next few years or more.

This could mean that Boeing has time to develop a new, clean sheet design. It is also possible that with a very real potential for changes in air travel usage, a different approach to aircraft passenger compartment features and layout is required or demanded. In that case, airliner types like the conventional single aisle narrow-body might not be what airlines want or need.

About the only thing I am certain of is that there are so many things we are uncertain of.

Absolutely agree, many uncertainties wrt to the future of commercial aviation. Without a vaccine, many will be reluctant to spend hours in a cramped tube. Same applies to mass transit. If this virus persists then even new aircraft with isolated compartments may not be enough of an enticement. The combination of new biosafety jets together with reduced passenger demand seems like a hopeless business model. Guess I should have used my frequent flyer points. I suspect a transCanada flight will take 5-10 times as many points if and when the airlines resume operation. A vaccine can’t come soon enough.

Boeing should maximize its efforts to sort the KC-46 and perhaps concentrate on future military jets. With all the new online ordering, I wonder if new air cargo capacity is needed via conversions or new freighters?

 

[ngatimozart]

Absolutely agree, many uncertainties wrt to the future of commercial aviation. Without a vaccine, many will be reluctant to spend hours in a cramped tube. Same applies to mass transit. If this virus persists then even new aircraft with isolated compartments may not be enough of an enticement. The combination of new biosafety jets together with reduced passenger demand seems like a hopeless business model. Guess I should have used my frequent flyer points. I suspect a transCanada flight will take 5-10 times as many points if and when the airlines resume operation. A vaccine can’t come soon enough.

Boeing should maximize its efforts to sort the KC-46 and perhaps concentrate on future military jets. With all the new online ordering, I wonder if new air cargo capacity is needed via conversions or new freighters?

Maybe Boeing should look at a baby C-17 type. A twin engined type that can carry about 40 - 45 tonnes. Just scale it down a bit.

 

[John Fedup]

Might be cheaper and faster to restart the C-17. Guessing the supply chain vendors would offer some aggressive pricing. As for a 40 ton twin cargo, doesn’t offer much above what a C-2 or KC-390 which are ready now. Freighter conversions seem to be the most cost effective solution for Air Cargo operations needing more capacity. I wish Canada would start shopping for some used A330s for conversion to MRTTs but I doubt there will be any money after our bailouts are summed up.

 

[Todjaeger]

Might be cheaper and faster to restart the C-17. Guessing the supply chain vendors would offer some aggressive pricing. As for a 40 ton twin cargo, doesn’t offer much above what a C-2 or KC-390 which are ready now. Freighter conversions seem to be the most cost effective solution for Air Cargo operations needing more capacity. I wish Canada would start shopping for some used A330s for conversion to MRTTs but I doubt there will be any money after our bailouts are summed up.

A new medium cargo twin with a payload of ~45 tonnes would be about 8 tonnes more than the max a Kawasaki C-2 could lift, and close to twice what a KC-390 could lift. I believe it would also be slightly more than the A400M could lift.

In some respects it might be better and easier to modify and then launch a C-17B or other updated variant with new/additional capabilities.

Given the likely shambles that many economies are going to be in for some time, as well as the impacts on a global production and supply chain, unless there is a real need to replace existing aircraft, I am uncertain whether a new design would really be able to take off. With the KC-390 only having a few orders, I could easily see no new ones getting placed as nations with airlifters opt to either retain existing fleets, or retire without replacement and then the KC-390 line getting shuttered. I also would not be surprised if cutbacks also manage to hit the A400M. Time will tell though.

 

[FormerDirtDart]

Maybe Boeing should look at a baby C-17 type. A twin engined type that can carry about 40 - 45 tonnes. Just scale it down a bit.

Might be cheaper and faster to restart the C-17. Guessing the supply chain vendors would offer some aggressive pricing. As for a 40 ton twin cargo, doesn’t offer much above what a C-2 or KC-390 which are ready now. Freighter conversions seem to be the most cost effective solution for Air Cargo operations needing more capacity. I wish Canada would start shopping for some used A330s for conversion to MRTTs but I doubt there will be any money after our bailouts are summed up.

Boeing sold off it's C-17 Long Beach California facility last summer. So, any 'restart' would require a great deal of shifting of production apparatus.
As for variants of the C-17 for commercial cargo. Nobody as at all interested in the MD-17/BC-17 the first time around.

Not thinking that's gonna change with the possibility of a market glut of potential aircraft available for cargo conversion at 'fire-sale' prices, and existing parts support.

They did consider a thinned down C-17 variant around a decade ago, the C-17FE (for 'Fuel-Efficient'). Though, they were still set on four-engine design. Not surprisingly it had roughly the same cargo cube/weight capacity of the C-141B.


This was shortly after they had suggested (and failed to garner interest) the C-17B, more powerful engines + beefed up landing gear arrangement + double-slotted flaps, to meet the future Army requirement of a 'tactical airlifter' to transport the 'Future Combat Systme (FCS) family of vehicles into rough terrain airfields.

 

[John Fedup]

Yes, hard to see any new design making headway against drastically reduced commercial jets available for conversion. Shame the C-17B never happened. A KC-17 wouldn’t have been such a bad idea either considering the KC-46’s progress to date.

 

[FormerDirtDart]

I would add, that one of the likely reasons you don't see military type cargo aircraft garnering more than a very small niche (oversize loads) in the civil/commercial cargo industry is logistics.
The commercial side is built around the airfreight containers. To maximize 'cube' usage. They vary in size a bit for different aircraft sometimes. But, for the most part they are lego blocks packed to max the cube of the aircraft.
Military cargo aircraft, designed for the outsized loads & random pallet configurations, would always wind up flying with the bane of a cargo industry, empty air.

 

[FormerDirtDart]

Yes, hard to see any new design making headway against drastically reduced commercial jets available for conversion. Shame the C-17B never happened. A KC-17 wouldn’t have been such a bad idea either considering the KC-46’s progress to date.

The KC-17 would never meet the multi-role tanker needs of the USAF, period.
The USAF requires a flying boom refueler (with a drogue & probe capacity included). A flying booms setup would require the loss of the C-17 cargo ramp, thus any usefulness of using the C-17 airframe design from the get go.

 

[Ananda]

Without a vaccine, many will be reluctant to spend hours in a cramped tube. Same applies to mass transit. If this virus persists then even new aircraft with isolated compartments may not be enough of an enticement. The combination of new biosafety jets together with reduced passenger demand seems like a hopeless business model. Guess I should have used my frequent flyer points. I suspect a transCanada flight will take 5-10 times as many points if and when the airlines resume operation. A vaccine can’t come soon enough.

I don't have link yet, since this is from what I heard still in the discussion, however one of several IATA suggestions to several governments including those in G20 is to make mandatory for all International traveling to provide certification of COVID 19 free.

This already being done historically by some countries for traveler that come from area that have high certain type of contagious disease. However since this COVID 19 already global occurrence, then they suggest all nation demand this kind of certificate for International travellers that will entry their country.

Again this's one of suggestions that I heard from Clients of mine that work in travel industry. The logic is to bring back level of comfort and trust from customers for them to take flight service again and also for recipients nation to accept tourists.

In the end it's how to bring back level of comfort and trust to average customers and recipients nation's to make flow of international travels come back with acceptable level of comfortability.

So, perhaps some kind of restrictions or certifications might be the way put to make International flight traffic's begin to back to normal. Mind you, this kind of actions only can workout if most nation's applied that.

 

[John Fedup]

By COVID free, I assume IATA means recovered patients that have antibodies present. Those who have not been exposed are at risk and just because they tested negative for COVID prior to travel, they may be positive before returning. Constant testing of travellers would be prohibitive. The other issue for antibody tests is the reliability of current tests. Also, what is the actual immunity provided and for how long? I don’t see this plan as a way to restore confidence in air travel. I think a vaccine is the only path toward commercial aviation recovery.

 

[Rob c]

To be honest there are more effective weapons than rogue airliners. They might have weaponised commercial aircraft back in 9/11 but remember nobody was expecting that. They were hijacked commercial airliners that were diverted to attack NY and Washington. If a large unidentified aircraft were to try and enter the airspace of the US or any other advanced nation they would probably be detected and dispatched pretty quickly. That is assuming that they weren't shot down soon after stealing the airliner. Hard to imagine you could refuel and take off in a jetliner without anyone noticing.

If you want a truly scary prospect just think of a terrorist group deliberately spreading a COVID 19 infection. Simpler and deadlier.

What if they just wanted to transport their men to a soft target to start a conflict in a new area. Even Perth would be vulnerable for a limited period of time though I would expect the ADF to prevail in time. However there is a large number of countries in Africa, South America or Island nations that could fall to this type of attach. From what I have read it appears that the spreading of Covid 19 without a human carrier is quite difficult, for instance it appears that in direct sunlight it remains viable for only a few minutes but in ideal conditions this can be extended to 2 or 3 days. This would seem to mean that to use it as a weapon you would have to introduce a large number of infected people into the community.

 

[FormerDirtDart]

I believe the animation included in this tweet provides an excellent representation as to the difficulties commercial aviation faces in regard to returning to "normalcy"

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1255220187948814343

 

[Ananda]

UPDATED: Boeing posts Q1 loss of US$641 million | AAV

Boeing reported a first-quarter Q1 loss of US$641 million as the company continues to deal with the grounding of its best-selling 737 MAX fleet

asianaviation.com

This article not only talking about how stress out Boeing financial condition is, however also talk about how Boeing will see that 2019 flight traffic condition will only back by early 2022.
This in my opinion shown the Boeing-Embrear deal falls much more related to Boeing financial condition, and not on Boeing possition that Embrear is in fault.

don’t see this plan as a way to restore confidence in air travel. I think a vaccine is the only path toward commercial aviation recovery.

The article above also related from what IATA think. Those discussions on what IATA want to propose, agree is not going to give back the level of Flight traffic to 2019. However it will bring back more traffic's from now.

Several ideas that being discussed by IATA and travel industry (again I only got this from my clients on the Industry), besides getting certification of COVID 19 free for Immigration;
Airlines operate only 50%-60% capacity per flight, limiting multiple used facilities like pillow, blankets, and modified food containers, there's also suggestion for crew to always used mask and gloves and making mandatory to all travelers to wear masks.
Also some suggestions quite expensive like for Airlines to modified their air circulation system with additional filtering. If not mistaken they are talking on putting disposable additional filters that will be change each flight.

Again all this just ideas that the industry and IATA talking that aimed to the increase level of confidence on flight. There will be segment of population that will not touch traveling with Airlines for some time. However there're also segment of population that need to go back for Airlines travels especially for Business-Commercial need.

There are also some tourists that will go back traveling even without availability of vaccines yet. You can see millennials will go back on traveling more than older generations.

True, vaccines will in the end determine when everyone else go back to travel. However for Industry, getting half capacities is already good enough to survive during this time. At least until end of years.

Some airlines in the nations especially with large diverse area like Indonesia, got business at this moment by flying cargo. Both cargo and 50% capacity of passenger traffic's I believe is the best that Airlines industry can hope up to end of this year or even first half of 2021.

 

[cdxbow]

I believe the animation included in this tweet provides an excellent representation as to the difficulties commercial aviation faces in regard to returning to "normalcy"

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1255220187948814343

Wow.
You really couldn't design a better system than an airliner to spread a respiratory born virus. If you don't get it on the airliner they put you in those queues before and after where you get to snake past everyone else, maximising your exposure. It's going to be a long time before international tourism gets back up to near what it was. Australia and NZ would be one of the first as each country has done well to control the spread of Covid-19 and could allow travel between them.
JF mentioned above the problems with antibody tests at the moment, and it does raise some issues about how you use the tests. If you were going to use tests it would probably be better to do a nasal swap and viral PCR, if they are positive they don't fly. A nasal swab, while unpleasant is less invasive than a blood test. Viral PCR for Covid-19 has been pretty quickly sorted out, false positive's do occur usually because the person has a different coronavirus, not the one causing Covid-19
Vaccines are at best a next year proposition.

 

[Todjaeger]

UPDATED: Boeing posts Q1 loss of US$641 million | AAV

Boeing reported a first-quarter Q1 loss of US$641 million as the company continues to deal with the grounding of its best-selling 737 MAX fleet

asianaviation.com

This article not only talking about how stress out Boeing financial condition is, however also talk about how Boeing will see that 2019 flight traffic condition will only back by early 2022.
This in my opinion shown the Boeing-Embrear deal falls much more related to Boeing financial condition, and not on Boeing possition that Embrear is in fault.



The article above also related from what IATA think. Those discussions on what IATA want to propose, agree is not going to give back the level of Flight traffic to 2019. However it will bring back more traffic's from now.

Several ideas that being discussed by IATA and travel industry (again I only got this from my clients on the Industry), besides getting certification of COVID 19 free for Immigration;
Airlines operate only 50%-60% capacity per flight, limiting multiple used facilities like pillow, blankets, and modified food containers, there's also suggestion for crew to always used mask and gloves and making mandatory to all travelers to wear masks.
Also some suggestions quite expensive like for Airlines to modified their air circulation system with additional filtering. If not mistaken they are talking on putting disposable additional filters that will be change each flight.

Again all this just ideas that the industry and IATA talking that aimed to the increase level of confidence on flight. There will be segment of population that will not touch traveling with Airlines for some time. However there're also segment of population that need to go back for Airlines travels especially for Business-Commercial need.

There are also some tourists that will go back traveling even without availability of vaccines yet. You can see millennials will go back on traveling more than older generations.

True, vaccines will in the end determine when everyone else go back to travel. However for Industry, getting half capacities is already good enough to survive during this time. At least until end of years.

Some airlines in the nations especially with large diverse area like Indonesia, got business at this moment by flying cargo. Both cargo and 50% capacity of passenger traffic's I believe is the best that Airlines industry can hope up to end of this year or even first half of 2021.

The thing about air travel however, is not just how the aviation industry can/will handle it, or even traveler's confidence in measures airlines have taken to protect passengers and/or mitigate risk. There would be a very big question on the part of arrival destinations about people coming in being potentially contagious or having become infected while in transit. I could easily see a receiving facility being required to quarantine new arrivals for a period of time long enough for several tests to be run clearing the traveler. One question I would have in this regard is how long a period a person who is infected with SARS-CoV-2 has to have been infected before the infection will show up in a nasal swab.

 

[hauritz]

Airlines have focussed on cramming as many passengers as possible into a plane. The emphasis might now move to increasing the social distancing as much as possible. Perhaps entire planes reconfigured as business class or even first class.

Once again air travel might just become the domain of the rich and famous.

 

[Todjaeger]

Airlines have focussed on cramming as many passengers as possible into a plane. The emphasis might now move to increasing the social distancing as much as possible. Perhaps entire planes reconfigured as business class or even first class.

Once again air travel might just become the domain of the rich and famous.

The air circulation system would still be a problem even if "social distancing" were attempted aboard an aircraft. Even if passengers were put further apart, the air circulation systems would still spread airborne material over the distances beyond what a person would spread normally, with the added issue of potentially aerosolizing more material than would normally be the case.

This has been one of the issues with re-opening sit-down/dine-in restaurants.

The potential solutions which come immediately to mind would be to have distinct, independent 'zones' for air circulation systems in the passenger compartment of aircraft, which doors/hatches to prevent co-mingling of air between different zones.

Another potential solution would be to include fine particle filtration and intense UV light to filter and sterilize the air prior to it being recycled back into the passenger and crew compartments.